Contemporary interest among American progressives in using antitrust law to address wealth inequality lacks a firm intellectual foundation. Indeed, both the original American progressives of a century ago and Thomas Piketty, whose work sparked contemporary interest in inequality, agree that inequality’s source is scarcity, rather than monopoly, and so inequality will persist even in perfectly competitive markets. The only real solution is taxation, not a potentially destructive campaign of breakup. Why, then, is antimonopolism so popular among American progressives today? There are two reasons. The first is American anti-statism, which has closed off tax policy as a viable political solution to inequality, forcing progressive scholars and activists to seek a second- or third-best workaround in antitrust policy. The second is the American press, which is actively promoting antimonopolism as a way of fighting back against Google and Facebook, two companies that have badly outcompeted the press for advertising dollars in recent years.

Since the Reagan era, American economic policy has amounted to self-colonization. Democratic majorities have consistently supported legal regimes that have enabled corporations to extract the lion’s share of the gains from trade from the public. For example, they have supported a corporate law regime that denies the public democratic control over the behavior of corporations and instead gives dictatorial powers to shareholders and managers. The Internet has made it even easier for firms to extract surpluses from consumers through surveillance and algorithmic pricing. One small contribution toward a project of decolonizing the public would be for consumers to obtain a property right in their personal information. This would allow them to claw back some of the surpluses that technology has taken from them.

This chapter examines the intended and unintended consequences of American hierarchy on partner states. It analyzes the impact of increased state capacity resulting from American economic hierarchy on civil conflict, human rights, democratization, and inequality. The results suggest that economic hierarchy reduces conflict, human rights abuses, and promotes democracy primarily through direct effects rather than via increased state capacity. However, both economic and security hierarchy exacerbate political inequalities. The chapter highlights the complex implications of American hierarchy.

This chapter examines the long-term development of inequality in Europe, focusing on disparities between individuals, households and nations. It explores how social and economic inequalities have evolved over time, influenced by economic forces as well as factors such as gender, race and class. The chapter also considers global inequality, discussing the gap between rich and poor nations and the factors that have contributed to economic divergence or convergence. By analysing the historical roots of inequality and the role of institutions in mitigating or exacerbating it, the chapter provides insights into the social and economic consequences of unequal income distribution and how it shapes economic policy debates today.

Jamila Michener (Cornell Political Science) asks how we might rethink access to justice as a political movement, not a legal one. She focuses on the “Civil Gideon” movement as a case study in how breaking the lawyers’ monopoly will require a political movement that sees access-to-legal service as part of a larger system of change. Michener’s contribution both further illuminates the right-to-counsel movement – including its weaknesses and (Michener argues) limited impact – and recontextualizes it, describing an essential role for counsel within broader organizing efforts.

Rebecca Haw Allensworth (Vanderbilt Law) argues that the legal services regulatory scheme perversely both over- and under-regulates the legal services marketplace – licensing too few lawyers on the front end and then, on the back end, taking insufficient steps to ensure adequate quality. According to Allensworth, the current system of lawyer regulation bars nonlawyer providers from the system and simultaneously shunts the lowest-quality lawyers into the system’s lower precincts, where the consequences of poor representation are most sharply felt. Allensworth’s lightning bolt of a chapter shows that the challenge of regulatory reform is not just opening the system to new providers but also rethinking how to allocate – and police – the providers already there.

Rebecca Sandefur (Arizona State) and Mathew Burnett (American Bar Foundation) – one a MacArthur Genius Award-winning sociologist, the other a longtime leader on access-to-justice issues – explore ways to reform legal services regulation, from relaxing UPL rules (to welcome new providers into the system) to relaxing Rule 5.4’s bar on nonlawyer ownership of law firms (to make available new sources of capital investment). After reviewing existing empirical evidence, they argue in favor of the former, in order to spur new human-centered service models, as against longer-term and less proven reforms altering law firm ownership.

Housing is a defining issue of our time, driving a persistent affordability crisis, financial instability, and economic inequality. Through the Roof examines the crucial role of the state in shaping the housing markets of two economic powerhouses – the United States and Germany. The book starts with a puzzle: Free-market America has vigorously supported homeownership markets with generous government programs, while social-market Germany has slashed policy support for both homeownership and rental markets throughout the past century. The book explains why the two nations have adopted such radically different and unexpected housing policy approaches. Drawing on extensive archival material and interviews with policymakers, it argues that contrasting forms of capitalism – demand-led in the United States and export-oriented in Germany – resulted in divergent housing policies. In both countries, these policies have subsequently transformed capitalism itself.

This chapter explores stand-up comedy in the UK arising out of comic song in the music hall. Spoken patter rather than songs became the centre of performances of the front cloth comedians in variety theatres, which continued until the 1950s. Subsequently, stand-ups found other places to perform, notably the working men’s club (WMC), with varied performance styles but a shared canon of jokes. The working-class Londoner is a performer and type existing across the development of stand-up. Alternative comedy arose from 1979 as a critique of the perceived sexism, racism and limited creativity of WMC comedy, and most comedians since have careers within these broad parameters. Despite this, inequalities still exist in the UK stand-up scene, and the consequences of the Covid pandemic were greater for comedians affected by inequalities of class, gender, race, disability, and sexuality who suffered more severe career setbacks, being less able to garner income online.

Limited research has been devoted to investigating assumptions about competition dynamics established through a neoliberal lens. Advocates argue that competition fosters innovation and benefits consumers by incentivizing private enterprises to develop better products or services at competitive prices compared to their rivals. Critics argue that competition exacerbates inequality by disproportionately rewarding high achievers. Rewarding high achievers reflects the meritocratic aspect of competition, which has been widely assumed to be rooted in the individualistic culture of Western countries. Contrary to this assumption, the ideology of meritocratic competition thrived in ancient collectivist Asian countries. Moreover, the assumed linear relationship between individualism, competition, and inequality is contradicted by economic literature, which suggests more individualistic nations display lower income inequality. Despite extensive economic and cultural examination of competition, competition’s political dimensions remain understudied. This interdisciplinary book challenges conventional assumptions about competition, synthesizing evidence across economics, culture, and politics.

The dominant assumptions positing a linear relationship among individualism, capitalism, competition, and inequality are often rooted in the perspectives of social scientists, whose focus is frequently confined to the West in modern times. I argue that these dominant assumptions have been formulated without sufficient opportunities or willingness to consider societies with cultures and systems different from those of the West. In this regard, this book challenges these dominant assumptions by presenting compelling counter-evidence that (1) competition occurs in every society throughout history whenever humans seek to survive and thrive; and (2) competition does not necessarily lead to inequality, but often serves as a tool to mitigate it, as competitions prevent absolute hegemony and allow individuals to challenge incumbent powers or privileged groups across cultures, systems, and eras. This closing chapter encourages readers to reassess their existing beliefs about the sources and consequences of competition and to strive for a deep understanding of competition arenas that they may choose to enter or inadvertently launch.

This chapter asks: how did the Enlightenment bring together and interweave the various germinating strands of individual equality, and how did enlightened writers translate the notion into political ideas and institutional schemes?

In The Secret Life of Copyright, copyright law meets Black Lives Matter and #MeToo in a provocative examination of how our legal regime governing creative production unexpectedly perpetuates inequalities along racial, gender, and socioeconomic lines while undermining progress in the arts. Drawing on numerous case studies – Harvard’s slave daguerreotypes, celebrity sex tapes, famous Wall Street statues, beloved musicals, and dictator copyrights – the book argues that, despite their purported neutrality, key rules governing copyrights – from the authorship, derivative rights, and fair use doctrines to copyright’s First Amendment immunity – systematically disadvantage individuals from traditionally marginalized communities. Since laws regulating the use of creative content increasingly mediate participation and privilege in the digital world, The Secret Life of Copyright provides a template for a more robust copyright system that better addresses egalitarian concerns and serves the interests of creativity.